Tamashii no Taku The Soul's Dwelling Place
by Depressed Mizuki
Summary: When Gaia and Terra were finally completely separated, the souls were separated too and now they wander, searching for a home. ZidanexMikoto slight ZidanexDagger at beginning


A/N: This is my first venture into the FFIX fandom. I sincerely hope that I can do it justice. On another note, just before we start, this is going to be a LONG multi-chaptered fic. That and I'm not going to be updating very often. The updates on this will be so slow you'll probably think I died, unless if something gives and I get more inspiration and TIME to write. With that said, if it's been like 8 or 9 months since I've updated PLEASE don't start using bodily injury or death threats, and please don't leave me reviews like "update update update" they're not very helpful... in the first couple of months sure, but after a while it gets tiresome.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own FFIX. That would be the best (in my opinion) RPG creator of all time, Square-Enix's, rights.

**Prologue – **_Screams of the Dead_

When sleep came to Zidane, horrible visions of years long past would surface in his mind, begging to be let free for the world to know. They were about all kinds of things, ranging from small accidents, to full blown murders and massacres, to Nuclear Snows wiping out entire populations. Besides death, there was only one thing that the dreams held in common, something that he had learned almost everything about during his trips through Terra, the Iifa Tree, and his own mind.

_**The Recycling of Souls**_

On average, each respective planet only recycles souls to its own inhabitants; however, in the one thousand or so years that Terra had been connected to Gaia, the souls of the Terrans and the Gaians had mixed - unbeknownst to the overseer of Terra, Garland - to the point where a Terran soul was indistinguishable from a Gaian one. Stating such, souls of Terrans who were meant to sleep until Gaia and Terra were one, were replaced by tired Gaian souls who had been through many cycles of life without rest, and Gaian souls which were meant to be recycled and live another life were replaced by groggy Terran souls which had not been through life in a near millennia. That is... until Terra was destroyed...

All souls had ended up taking residence on Gaia, creating a horrible mist that covered the world. Zidane and his motley group of friends had taken care of that by destroying the Iifa Tree, supposedly returning the souls to their proper cycling, and getting rid of the mist. This made the Terran souls finally distinguishable from Gaian souls, and Gaia removed what souls it deemed to be not its own and sent them all to a resting place. Their resting place being a place where they were unable to go through the cycle of life, thus creating the mist once again…

Though, the mist no longer covered areas where Gaians dwelt...

Life went on without any people noticing the mist that was becoming larger and larger each day, expanding from the home that Gaia had given it in its quest to purge its lands of foreign souls, trying to take over the world once more... Except for two:

_Mikoto and Zidane_

Zidane constantly dreamed of the world of Terra and the peril that its souls were in. They were always screaming and crying out for help, wishing and waiting and wailing, hoping, pleading for someone to come and rescue them from their prison, to give them life once more.

Mikoto heard their voices while she was awake, their screams and pleading prayers invading her every sense to the point where she was constantly trying to stay unconscious, even going as far as to forcing the black mages that were left to cast sleep on her JUST so that she wouldn't have to hear them scream.

The only two genomes with souls knew they had to do something to stop it all, but until a signal came that signified when it was time, they were stuck bearing the torture.

* * *

This night was the same as any other for Zidane. Sleep, have nightmares, wake up, pace around, fall back asleep, hear screams, wake up again, pace more, try to sleep, and finally give up, heading out to the balcony attached to his room in Alexandria's renovated castle. After his many months of sleepless nights, he was sure that he had black bags under his eyes as dark as Vivi's skin seemed to be for all that, that hat let anyone see. He was actually surprised that no one had called him on his insomnia yet, seeing as they were around him all the time. Even Dagger had said nothing. Hell, she hadn't even glanced once in his direction with worry or anything. Maybe months of hardly any sleep just weren't that noticable...

Yeah right...

Zidane sighed heavily and decided that since it was only one thirty am and he had already completed his nightly cycle of trying to sleep, he had best go try it again, so that when morning came in approximately four and a half hours he would have enough energy to at least MOVE...

Coming to his bed, he threw off the robe he had donned when he had started his latest bout of pacing, and climbed in, hoping to any sapient being that might be out there that he would get some actual rest this night.

* * *

Mikoto was asleep for the tenth time that night, unable to shake the feeling from her conscious mind that the souls were more restless than usual. No matter how many times she tried to sleep, and no matter how many times the black mages put her in a forced sleep, she would wake up within a matter of minutes and hear the pleading screams, the unbearable voices, the painful memories that were not hers. She couldn't live like this anymore. She couldn't sleep her life away because of some dumb souls who needed a home. There had to be a way to stop all of this... there just had to be...

After only ten minutes of rest, Mikoto shot up in bed breathing heavily. Covers were thrown off in a hurry and clothes were pulled on as quickly as possible. Something was happening. She could feel it in her bones and in her soul as well as through the screams of the souls of Terrans long dead.

Something was happening.

* * *

As soon as Zidane's head hit the pillow he was 'out like a light' as they say, dreaming about the occurrences on Terra, and listening to the voices of the dead wail their lonely songs of pain and death, but one voice stuck out above all the others, a voice that let him know... it was time.

_**The Souls of Terra are coming home!**_

_**Make way for the new Terra!**_

**TBC...**

A/N: Um... I hope you liked it... it was a random idea that popped into my head as I was finishing the game... which I only beat on a stroke of pure ass fucking luck. This is random and pointless, but my entire party died about halfway through Necron and somehow, by a rare chance of fate, Phoenix cast the auto version of Rebirth Flame... I was so lucky. So so lucky. Anyway, please review because I would like to hear feedback! um a note... this chapter was VERY short... the proceeding chapters will be much longer (hopefully). With that said, I'll try to have the next update up as soon as is possible.

Ja ne!


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